This is a relatively simple (yet tl;dr quality) guide on how to make beeeest friends with the creeps in the jungle. Amumu is one of the best jungling characters in the game, and is the most fun (in my opinion) of them second only to possibly fiddlestix.
There's lots of ways to build his gear, but this will focus around Sunfire Cape's, LOTS OF THEM.
This build is great if you:
A.) Like playing tank characters who can shrug off a major beating.
B.) Want to farm gear faster than most other champions in your game.
C.) Would like to be a strong AoE asset in group fights
D.) Want to find some friends, and stop being so sad.
Now that all of that is out of the way, lets get down to the pre-game.
Runes: Don't matter much. I use armor pen, health regen and mana regen runes currently. More fun ones to use are the xp% increase and CD reduction.
Masteries: far more important than runes.
0/22/8
Hardiness 3/3
Resistance 3/3
Defensive Mastery 2/2
Harden Skin 3/3
Veteran's Scars 4/4
Ardor 3/3
Tenacity 1/1
Perseverence 3/3
Spatial Accuracy 1/1
Awareness 4/4
Thats the basic frame, though there is leniency based on your choice in summoner spells, as you may want to spec into Mender's Faith for heal, or Haste for Ghost, or perhaps take a point out of defense for Cripple or Plentiful Bounty based on your tastes.
The biggest part of the masteries are the mitigation talents, and the extra xp gain from Awareness. You want to take the least damage possible from creeps and heroes alike, considering you're tanking creeps all game, the talents relating to damage reduction from them is highly relevant.
Summoner Spells: also an important consideration.
Damn near required:
Heal OR Smite.
You don't need both, but you'll need one or the other to effectively jungle starting at level 1. I heavily prefer smite for efficiency sake and killing everything faster. However heal will do you better for ganking, and team fights that you get into. So it's really your choice, but more than likely you're going to need one or the other of these. Hell you can take both if you want, though only one is necessary.
Highly Suggested:
Teleport
This needs little explanation, teleport is amazing for efficiency in getting from your base to where you need to be, defending a tower if a team mate dies, or even getting to the other half of the map from bot to top in order to farm camps faster. This is my favourite.
Flash
This is another big one, Flash is an amazing tool to have at your disposal. Escape from imminent doom, or to seal the fate of one of your "friends" that you've been chasing down. It applies heavily to both. If teleport isn't your thing, this is the next best choice in my opinion.
Acceptable:
Fortify
You can put a point into the talent for fortify to increase your creep damage and farm quicker, it's also a solid defense to support your team while you're away if defense is needed.
Cleanse
Anti-CC is a nice thing as the game develops more slows and more stuns for you to deal with. Nothing incites more rage than a well timed stun when you're chasing down that "friend" at less than 10% health.
Clairvoyance
With the changes, it isn't as amazing as it used to be, leaving wards in the jungle making your team (with any awareness) near gank-proof. Now it still has a solid application. Being able to reveal any place on the map for 4 seconds isn't a bad thing, though not as useful as other abilities.
Ghost
Long distance chasing and sweet ass clipping, whats not to love? Not as effective as flash for clutch situations, but has more long term consistency if you need more chasing or escape power over longer periods of time.
Exhaust
A slow, and a blind. A solid tool for chasing and escaping, it can also be that edge you need on dps carries to beat them down.
Revive
You shouldn't die much, if ever. However, in the cases that you do, it's nice to get back in the fray and farming immediately instead of waiting
EWWWW NO:
Promote:
You're not going to be in a lane often. Promote will do near nothing for you unless you're pushing a tower, in which case there are still better spells.
Rally:
Most of your dps is going to be magic, and you won't have the talent for improved rally. It won't work well at all. Most team fights move around too much for rally to have much of an effect, making it useful only for pushing towers, like promote.
Now for Amumu himself!
The skill build should be as follows:
1) Tantrum
2) Despair
3) Despair
4) Tantrum
5) Despair
6) Curse of the Sad Mummy
7) Bandage Toss
8) Tantrum
9) Tantrum
10)Tantrum
11) Curse of the Sad Mummy
12) Bandage Toss
13) Bandage Toss
14) Bandage Toss
15) Bandage Toss
16) Curse of the Sad Mummy
17) Despair
18) Despair
Tantrum is your biggest farming tool, the more you get hit, the more you can spam it. The higher the rank, the less damage you take and a shorter cooldown. However the damage doesn't rise, and you wanna be able to "make friends" with that big bad dragon by the river. Because of that, we start levelling despair up to rank 3 first so you can be reeeal friendly with that dragon at level 6.
From there, you want the point in bandage toss so you have that initiator and a stun, since from level 6 on you're going to be an effective ganker when you're between camps. With your ult, the stun, and the lizard rune buff, people aren't going to get away very fast at all.
Finish tantrum for the full damage reduction and CD reduction for the most farming ability and bandage toss for more single target damage.
With despair being as important as it is for farming you might wonder "well why don't we max it out earlier?" Well thats because after the initial few levels, you aren't going to need much more of that damage for creep farming, as your damage output will increase enough with tantrum, however the burst damage from bandage toss helps a lot more in pvp than the gradual damage difference from despair.
Items! The simplest, yet most important, part!
The item build is truely simple. The only real thinking that goes through my head is which order?
First item when starting out will be Regrowth Pendant for less down time between creep waves (or to eliminate it completely ideally)
Next, you want Sorcerer's Boots. Port back for these as soon as you have the money, it will help your long term farming a lot more than waiting around until later.
From there, get a Rod of Ages. "But this is a sunfire cloak build, don't I want those?!?!?!" YES, however you can't neglect your mana pool, or AP completely. This will give you more staying power, some good health, and a good portion of AP to boot. Mana is very important since you won't have any regen other than the golem buff.
Now here's where we go SUNFIRE SUNFIRE SUNFIRE SUNFIRE SUNFIRE, STACK SUNFIRE CAPES. At this point, sell your regrowth pendant, as you'll be using the slots for sunfire capes. It's rare a game will last long enough for 4 of them, however it does happen, and the extra money from selling that regrowth pendant if you're a tad short will save you a trip back if you can get it right then and there.
So your items should look like this in the end:
Sunfire Cape (the regrowth pendant WAS here)
Sorcerer's Boots
Rod of Ages
Sunfire Cape
Sunfire Cape
(Sunfire Cape)[if you can afford it]
You'll be doing 120-160 damage per second to all the enemies around you. On top of that, you'll have despair doing around 3% of their health every second, and be spamming tantrum every time its off cooldown, that's a lot of aoe damage!
On top of that, you'll be sitting on over 4k health, and a ton of armor. Very little will be able to penetrate your defenses, and very little will be able to put up with your constant drain on their health.
In the Jungle:
The game starts, you get your pendant, you head into the jungle, but to where? THERE ARE SO MANY FRIENDS! Well, the place you start is at the golem. You'll need that mana regen buff if you're going to get anywhere fast. Simply enough, you smite him, then attack, using tantrum every time its up until all 3 are dead and you're the first level 2 on the map.
From there you move up to the next camp, and kill the (most likely) ancient golems, and move across mid to the 4 ghosts. Be careful with the golems though, they hit hard and slow, making tantrum a little harder to use. I've ended up with a sliver of health left. If you're too low, its better to wait a sec for regen than to die.
After the ghosts in mid you should kill the lizard for its buff. At this point smite should be up at some point in the fight and you'll be golden, having 2 buffs and being a farming monster. rotate all through top jungle, refreshing your golem buff. This is right around the time you'd want to pill back and get your boots. I normally port to the tower on bottom lane and go back into the jungle there. Stuff should be respawning and there's camps you haven't visited yet. After making another run through or-so you should be level 6, and ready to take on the mean mean dragon. Make sure you have Rank 3 despair, and your smite/heal. Gonna need both to take him down, since he has a ton of health despair is gonna be a wrecking ball on him while you also spam Tantrum.
At this point, you're now a certified ganker. Make sure to keep up on the creeping and rune buffs, and seize any opportunity to slip in for a gank while you farm. A chance for a kill is more important than farming mindlessly, as it forces the enemy to retreat, and possibly nets you some gold and exp for a kill/assist if they don't escape. Kill the dragon every time its up for a nice exp boost and some gold for your team, eventually your team should in general out level theirs (assuming you lack feeders) with 2 solo lanes, and repeated dragon kills.
Don't be afraid to hold a lane while somebody pills. You can get some good gold here too, as well as keeping the solo exp from jungling.
Notable Worries! D:
Other Junglers: Warwick, Nunu, Amumu, Fiddlestix, and even Malphite can put a good kink in your works if you're competing for a jungle. Make sure to watch the lanes to see if they're jungling or laning. Nothing's worse than fighting for a buff, or worrying about somebody jumping you while you kill the dragon.
Cardmaster: His ult reveals your position making you ample gank bait. He can also port directly to you to gank you if you're low from all that jungling and tanking. This is something to be very cautious of.
Karthas: Oh lawd, how many times I've been brought damn near death by his ult, just by dumb luck while he was trying to KS some other fight. Make sure to keep your health up when in a game against karthas, as you don't want him getting lucky.
Teemo: UGH MUSHROOMS. Teemo likes to hang around in the jungle too, even if he isn't killing anything! his mushrooms act as miniature sight wards as well as an aggravating damage and slow. Running into a few of those can spell an anticlimactic doom to the unwary.
There's lots of ways to build his gear, but this will focus around Sunfire Cape's, LOTS OF THEM.
This build is great if you:
A.) Like playing tank characters who can shrug off a major beating.
B.) Want to farm gear faster than most other champions in your game.
C.) Would like to be a strong AoE asset in group fights
D.) Want to find some friends, and stop being so sad.
Now that all of that is out of the way, lets get down to the pre-game.
Runes: Don't matter much. I use armor pen, health regen and mana regen runes currently. More fun ones to use are the xp% increase and CD reduction.
Masteries: far more important than runes.
0/22/8
Hardiness 3/3
Resistance 3/3
Defensive Mastery 2/2
Harden Skin 3/3
Veteran's Scars 4/4
Ardor 3/3
Tenacity 1/1
Perseverence 3/3
Spatial Accuracy 1/1
Awareness 4/4
Thats the basic frame, though there is leniency based on your choice in summoner spells, as you may want to spec into Mender's Faith for heal, or Haste for Ghost, or perhaps take a point out of defense for Cripple or Plentiful Bounty based on your tastes.
The biggest part of the masteries are the mitigation talents, and the extra xp gain from Awareness. You want to take the least damage possible from creeps and heroes alike, considering you're tanking creeps all game, the talents relating to damage reduction from them is highly relevant.
Summoner Spells: also an important consideration.
Damn near required:
Heal OR Smite.
You don't need both, but you'll need one or the other to effectively jungle starting at level 1. I heavily prefer smite for efficiency sake and killing everything faster. However heal will do you better for ganking, and team fights that you get into. So it's really your choice, but more than likely you're going to need one or the other of these. Hell you can take both if you want, though only one is necessary.
Highly Suggested:
Teleport
This needs little explanation, teleport is amazing for efficiency in getting from your base to where you need to be, defending a tower if a team mate dies, or even getting to the other half of the map from bot to top in order to farm camps faster. This is my favourite.
Flash
This is another big one, Flash is an amazing tool to have at your disposal. Escape from imminent doom, or to seal the fate of one of your "friends" that you've been chasing down. It applies heavily to both. If teleport isn't your thing, this is the next best choice in my opinion.
Acceptable:
Fortify
You can put a point into the talent for fortify to increase your creep damage and farm quicker, it's also a solid defense to support your team while you're away if defense is needed.
Cleanse
Anti-CC is a nice thing as the game develops more slows and more stuns for you to deal with. Nothing incites more rage than a well timed stun when you're chasing down that "friend" at less than 10% health.
Clairvoyance
With the changes, it isn't as amazing as it used to be, leaving wards in the jungle making your team (with any awareness) near gank-proof. Now it still has a solid application. Being able to reveal any place on the map for 4 seconds isn't a bad thing, though not as useful as other abilities.
Ghost
Long distance chasing and sweet ass clipping, whats not to love? Not as effective as flash for clutch situations, but has more long term consistency if you need more chasing or escape power over longer periods of time.
Exhaust
A slow, and a blind. A solid tool for chasing and escaping, it can also be that edge you need on dps carries to beat them down.
Revive
You shouldn't die much, if ever. However, in the cases that you do, it's nice to get back in the fray and farming immediately instead of waiting
EWWWW NO:
Promote:
You're not going to be in a lane often. Promote will do near nothing for you unless you're pushing a tower, in which case there are still better spells.
Rally:
Most of your dps is going to be magic, and you won't have the talent for improved rally. It won't work well at all. Most team fights move around too much for rally to have much of an effect, making it useful only for pushing towers, like promote.
Now for Amumu himself!
Quote:
| Bandage Toss (Active): Amumu tosses a sticky bandage at a target, it stuns and damages the target while he pulls himself to them. Note: Skillshot, sweet for initiation. Despair (Active): Drains the health of nearby enemies. Note: Based off % of total health, this is one of your main farming abilities and contributes to your aoe damage greatly. Tantrum (Active): Permanently reduces physical damage Amumu would take. Additionally, upon being hit a number of times, Amumu can unleash his rage, dealing damage to surrounding enemies. Note: This is the cornerstone to your farming, combined with Despair. This makes it easy to farm creep waves and camps alike. Also makes ganking people behind their creep line lots of fun. Curse of the Sad Mummy (Active): Amumu entangles surrounding enemy units in bandages, causing them to be unable to move or attack and take damage each second. Note: one of your best team gank skills and can make or break a battle. AoE root makes melee useless against your ranged and casters, and stops those trying to run from getting away. Amazing skill. Cursed Touch (Passive): This unit has reduced Magic Resistance. Note: Pretty damn useful, its a passive damage increase from your abilities as long as you can keep hitting them to apply it. |
1) Tantrum
2) Despair
3) Despair
4) Tantrum
5) Despair
6) Curse of the Sad Mummy
7) Bandage Toss
8) Tantrum
9) Tantrum
10)Tantrum
11) Curse of the Sad Mummy
12) Bandage Toss
13) Bandage Toss
14) Bandage Toss
15) Bandage Toss
16) Curse of the Sad Mummy
17) Despair
18) Despair
Tantrum is your biggest farming tool, the more you get hit, the more you can spam it. The higher the rank, the less damage you take and a shorter cooldown. However the damage doesn't rise, and you wanna be able to "make friends" with that big bad dragon by the river. Because of that, we start levelling despair up to rank 3 first so you can be reeeal friendly with that dragon at level 6.
From there, you want the point in bandage toss so you have that initiator and a stun, since from level 6 on you're going to be an effective ganker when you're between camps. With your ult, the stun, and the lizard rune buff, people aren't going to get away very fast at all.
Finish tantrum for the full damage reduction and CD reduction for the most farming ability and bandage toss for more single target damage.
With despair being as important as it is for farming you might wonder "well why don't we max it out earlier?" Well thats because after the initial few levels, you aren't going to need much more of that damage for creep farming, as your damage output will increase enough with tantrum, however the burst damage from bandage toss helps a lot more in pvp than the gradual damage difference from despair.
Items! The simplest, yet most important, part!
The item build is truely simple. The only real thinking that goes through my head is which order?
First item when starting out will be Regrowth Pendant for less down time between creep waves (or to eliminate it completely ideally)
Next, you want Sorcerer's Boots. Port back for these as soon as you have the money, it will help your long term farming a lot more than waiting around until later.
From there, get a Rod of Ages. "But this is a sunfire cloak build, don't I want those?!?!?!" YES, however you can't neglect your mana pool, or AP completely. This will give you more staying power, some good health, and a good portion of AP to boot. Mana is very important since you won't have any regen other than the golem buff.
Now here's where we go SUNFIRE SUNFIRE SUNFIRE SUNFIRE SUNFIRE, STACK SUNFIRE CAPES. At this point, sell your regrowth pendant, as you'll be using the slots for sunfire capes. It's rare a game will last long enough for 4 of them, however it does happen, and the extra money from selling that regrowth pendant if you're a tad short will save you a trip back if you can get it right then and there.
So your items should look like this in the end:
Sunfire Cape (the regrowth pendant WAS here)
Sorcerer's Boots
Rod of Ages
Sunfire Cape
Sunfire Cape
(Sunfire Cape)[if you can afford it]
You'll be doing 120-160 damage per second to all the enemies around you. On top of that, you'll have despair doing around 3% of their health every second, and be spamming tantrum every time its off cooldown, that's a lot of aoe damage!
On top of that, you'll be sitting on over 4k health, and a ton of armor. Very little will be able to penetrate your defenses, and very little will be able to put up with your constant drain on their health.
In the Jungle:
The game starts, you get your pendant, you head into the jungle, but to where? THERE ARE SO MANY FRIENDS! Well, the place you start is at the golem. You'll need that mana regen buff if you're going to get anywhere fast. Simply enough, you smite him, then attack, using tantrum every time its up until all 3 are dead and you're the first level 2 on the map.
From there you move up to the next camp, and kill the (most likely) ancient golems, and move across mid to the 4 ghosts. Be careful with the golems though, they hit hard and slow, making tantrum a little harder to use. I've ended up with a sliver of health left. If you're too low, its better to wait a sec for regen than to die.
After the ghosts in mid you should kill the lizard for its buff. At this point smite should be up at some point in the fight and you'll be golden, having 2 buffs and being a farming monster. rotate all through top jungle, refreshing your golem buff. This is right around the time you'd want to pill back and get your boots. I normally port to the tower on bottom lane and go back into the jungle there. Stuff should be respawning and there's camps you haven't visited yet. After making another run through or-so you should be level 6, and ready to take on the mean mean dragon. Make sure you have Rank 3 despair, and your smite/heal. Gonna need both to take him down, since he has a ton of health despair is gonna be a wrecking ball on him while you also spam Tantrum.
At this point, you're now a certified ganker. Make sure to keep up on the creeping and rune buffs, and seize any opportunity to slip in for a gank while you farm. A chance for a kill is more important than farming mindlessly, as it forces the enemy to retreat, and possibly nets you some gold and exp for a kill/assist if they don't escape. Kill the dragon every time its up for a nice exp boost and some gold for your team, eventually your team should in general out level theirs (assuming you lack feeders) with 2 solo lanes, and repeated dragon kills.
Don't be afraid to hold a lane while somebody pills. You can get some good gold here too, as well as keeping the solo exp from jungling.
Notable Worries! D:
Other Junglers: Warwick, Nunu, Amumu, Fiddlestix, and even Malphite can put a good kink in your works if you're competing for a jungle. Make sure to watch the lanes to see if they're jungling or laning. Nothing's worse than fighting for a buff, or worrying about somebody jumping you while you kill the dragon.
Cardmaster: His ult reveals your position making you ample gank bait. He can also port directly to you to gank you if you're low from all that jungling and tanking. This is something to be very cautious of.
Karthas: Oh lawd, how many times I've been brought damn near death by his ult, just by dumb luck while he was trying to KS some other fight. Make sure to keep your health up when in a game against karthas, as you don't want him getting lucky.
Teemo: UGH MUSHROOMS. Teemo likes to hang around in the jungle too, even if he isn't killing anything! his mushrooms act as miniature sight wards as well as an aggravating damage and slow. Running into a few of those can spell an anticlimactic doom to the unwary.
